bio

Born in Budapest Hungary, photographer Karchi Perlmann constructs his visual narratives with purpose, patience and an arsenal of 21st Century tools. For over 25 years, Karchi has been shooting advertising, commissioned and personal works of art. His professional career began in the seat of a Cessna 150 and a Nikon F4 in his hand then continued on the ground in his Florida studio underneath the dark cloth of his 1950’s 4X5 Linhoff. Through the years Karchi shot architectural, portraiture, landscape, narrative, abstract and impressionist subject matter. His images appeared in Architectural Digest, Time Magazine, Home and Garden, Gulfshore Life American Photography and various other publications. Some of his work is in private collections. In the mid 90’s he also began writing, directing and producing short format films. He produced “Rose’s,” a multiple award winning feature film released theatrically in 2000.
In 1999 Karchi moved to Venice Beach, CA and began focusing on his SOCAL surroundings. He produced the “My Backyard” series looking at Venice Beach during the “closing hours,” and works depicting life in the film industry. Karchi donated time to teach photography to teenagers with substance abuse, inspiring them toward alternate forms of expression. The works premiered in LA and went onto a US tour until it was permanently placed in Washington DC. Karchi also donated a series to the Friends of Lockwood, an inner city school fundraising organization. Between 2001-2004 Karchi exhibited a large body of work, spanning his first 10 years of career, at the private Caleb Gallery in Glendale. While in Glendale, he began to experiment with the notion of painting with his digital camera, combining movement with time exposure. The result brought about several urban and abstract-impressionistic works, influence that can bee seen in his work today. In the late 2000s he turned the camera on himself, shooting various self-portrait series, including the intimate and rarely seen “Self Obsession.” In 2008 Karchi premiered and won at the 65th Venice Film festival in Italy with his Hungarian film “Vacsora”, resulting in a two-year festival run and multiple Grand Jury prizes. 2011 marked the beginning of Another Planet series, a contemplative and subtle surreal narrative of Joshua Tree, inspired by Karchi’s first encounter with this other worldly place.
His recent work the Time Cather and Together Discombobulated are both the direct descendants of his time-exposure-movement experiments, the latter of which is a abstract-impressionistic series of downtown Los Angeles, revealing a completely fresh take on cityscape photography. So far this year Karchi won a permanent placement in the coveted American Photography 31 issue juried website collection, has won as well as have been featured twice in yourdailyphototograph.com photo portal, hosted by the prestigious Duncan Miller Gallery and won a placement in two group shows one at the Linus Gallery in Pasadena and the other at Orange County Creatives Gallery, respectively. In April, he participated in Jackalope Art Fair where he showcased some of his recent work where he added new collectors to his roster.